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Week 6

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 4 months ago

Free Culture Movement I

 

0. Mid-term and Recap:

 

Elaboration on the pier preservation experience: affective and subjective knowledge - social agency

 

1. Liberalism and communitarianism debate

 

Political morality:

 

- Liberalism: interest in maximum, equal liberty, human rights, rational and self-governing self, universal

 

- Communitarianism: situated morality (defined by community, such as family, groups), good prior to right, shared common meaning, inter-subjective self, relative (unjust invasion)

 

- Politics of common goods VS. politics of rights (indecent and obscenity debate)

 

- Knowledge and information as property or common goods?

 

Neo-liberalism

 

- Neo-liberal agenda: uplift global trade barrier to eradicate poverty - free trade by imposing, for example:

 

TRIPS - Trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights e.g medicine and software

TRIMS - Trade related investment measures (remove restriction on FDI) e.g labour intensive rather than technology advancement in China

GATS - General agreement on trade in services e.g education, hospital, postal service, etc.

 

- The global market challenge to "common"

 

2. Knowledge as property under the context of globalization and neo-liberal economy

 

Ref: Unacceptable Costs: The Consequences of Making Knowledge Property in a Global Society by Christopher May (Global Society, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2002)

 

- WTO - TRIPS which incorporates agreement from WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) - knowledge as property - labour, reproduction of self in the civil society, value for scarcity and stimulus for innovation

 

- Moral ground: tragedy of the commons - Garret Hardin's "herdsman in common land" scenario - market mechanism instead of universal ruin - question: can knowledge be exhausted like natural environment?

 

- commodification of knowledge would make ideas scarce and from a social point of view less valuable - balance between private and public good. Patents (20 years) Copyrights (50 years after death)

 

- From owner's right to property as assets - corporate withholding and absentee owners - exclusive rights and monopoly

 

- e.g AIDS crisis in Africa (more than 20% of the 15± 49 year-old population HIV+) - generic drugs legislation in South Africa in 1997 challenged by U.S government representative - Novartis sued against India generic AIDS medicine Demonstration in India

 

- e.g public realm / domain - James Boyle environmental movement in the net - knowledge as a global resource - limitations and challenge

 

Practice

 

3. Internet culture: cracking the tech and the system

 

Ref: The internet Galaxy chapter 2.

 

3.1 Agents:

 

- Techno-elites - cutting edge technology (institutional)

 

- Hackers - network of programmers - the development of UNIX - 1984 becomes Bell Lab property - Richard Stallman advocated Free software and developed GNU and Linux - open access to all the program's information and freedom to modify - gift economy - subculture: crackers

 

- Virtual communitarians - users oriented - shape the internet mediascape - e.g BBS and Citizen media

 

- Entrepreneurs - idea oriented business - selling of future - diverse interest - money driven

 

3.2 Hacktivist

 

- What is hacking? - appropriation of technology

 

In my day to day life, I find myself hacking everything imaginable. I hack traffic lights, pay phones, answering machines, microwave ovens, VCRs, you name it, without even thinking twice. To me hacking is just changing the conditions over and over again until there's a different reponse. In today's mechanical world, the opportunities for this kind of experimentation are endless.

- From Tim Jordan and Paul A. Taylor, Hacktivism and Cyberwars: Rebels with a cause?

 

- Hack Lab in San Diego

 

- Hacking and innovation

 

E.g The development of internet phone - business incorporation

Example from Hong Kong: Nepal Telephone radio

 

4. Free Culture and copyrights

 

4.1 Lawrence Lessig's free culture (pdf)

 

4.1.1 What is free culture?

 

A balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state.

 

- The airplane scenario - Wright brothers and invention of plane - land property (from earth to the heaven) - 1945 court: air as public highway - common sense develops through new technological environment

 

- Armstrong's death - establishment against innovation

 

- The difference between everyday life culture (free) and commercial culture - the former being eroded - business protectionism rather than innovation

 

4.1.2 Piracy

 

Disney's Mickey mouse (1928) from Steamboat Willie, stories from Brother Grimm - creative works are derivative

 

The rise of popular culture is related with mechanical reproduction - photography, film, news

 

Pirate industry - Hollywood: film-maker escaped from Thomas Edison - recording industry - radio - cable TV

 

The issue of harm

 

4.1.3 Property

 

Copyright (right to reprint - author) VS Copy-right (monopoly right - booksellers)

 

Regulation: Law, Norms, Market and Architecture (interactive) - Copy-right as DDT

 

Free culture - creative commons

 

4.2 Electronic Frontier Foundation - a leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world

 

Advocacy and legal action on:

- Free speech

- Intellectual property

- Privacy (against surveillance)

 

5. University and privatization of knowledge

 

 

From: Recent Changes in Patent Policy and the Privatization of Knowledge: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for Developing Countries - by By Bhaven N. Sampat

 

Government sponsored research: public or private? how about developing countries? (another dumping scenario)

 

Example in China: Tsinghua holding

 

5.2 Student movement: freeculture.org

 

A network of student org across the northern America

 

Manifesto for digital commons

 

- Participatory democracy: the mission of the Free Culture movement is to build a bottom-up, participatory structure to society and culture

 

- Refuse to accept a future of digital feudalism where we do not actually own the products we buy - against DRM: Anti RIAA Propaganda

 

- Uphold the value of our cultural wealth, promoting free software and the open-source model.

 

- Resist repressive legislation which threatens our civil liberties and stifles innovation.

 

6. Discussion: Where's the free culture in Hong Kong?

 

Cyberpolitics

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